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5150 " clone "

G

gonekrazy

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P1010003.JPGI have a CPT Corp Office Companion 2000 in working condition and can find very little info on them as if they don't exist. Here's a little info on it. Monitor- CPT Data Display model BDS-1202 manufactured September 1985 made in Taiwan. Monitor has burn in and has a split screen. Computer has a floppy drive only. Inside- Masterboard is OSM Computer Corp. copyright 1985 17000065-01 Rev. Intel Chip D8088-2 Intel '78 '81. Most boards inside are also from OSM Computer Corp. dated 1984. Seagate hard drive. I found 2 small pieces of paper inside, they read- WC 00 849 8552. Other piece reads- Floppy W 00 2521 8551. CPT tag on back of computer reads P.N.980271-000 S.N.002542 made in Hong Kong no date. Screen on boot reads-Unilogic Z-rom V1.4 639 KB memory running at 8Mhz Loaded External Disk Driver for Drive E Current date is Tue 01-01-1980 Enter new date (mm-dd-yy). I tinker with computers and came across this in some ones basement. Info from article I found reads-



MINNEAPOLIS, May 13 /PRNewswire/ -- CPT Corp. (NASDAQ: CPTC) today announced support and distribution of Western Digital's ViaNet(TM) LAN software for CPT products such as the new CPT 9000 workstation, the CPT Office Companion(TM) 2000 (2000T) workstation, and the SRS (Shared Resource System).

As the entry level product of CPneT Networking Systems Solutions, ViaNet provides a peer-to-peer distributed networking environment for up to eight MS-DOS(A)-based PCs per network configuration. A dedicated server is not required.

Using ArcNet(TM) topology, ViaNet ...

I will add some pics.
 
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Here she is running "check out those legs"
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http://i936.photobucket.com/albums/ad209/gonekrazy4eva/P1010006.jpg
 
I have a strong suspicion that the version of MS-DOS that runs on your system is OEM-specific and not the generic IBM one.

When you issue the "VER" command after boot, what's displayed? Often, OEM MS-DOS editions have versions that one doesn't see (e.g. 1.26; 2.00A) in the usual IBM issue.

Alternatively, format up a system floppy on this box and try to boot it on a PC.

If that's the case, I strongly suggest that you back up the hard drive, as you're not likely to find another copy of DOS that will work with your system.
 
Chuck(G) said:
If that's the case, I strongly suggest that you back up the hard drive, as you're not likely to find another copy of DOS that will work with your system.
Click to expand...

What would stop a "normal" MS-DOS or PC-DOS of the same age from running on it?

(wondering for my own knowledge's sake, not attempting to strike down your point...I just didn't know there was anything at all hardware-specific about the OEM versions of DOS besides perhaps drivers for non-essential extra hardware the machine shipped with like a particular RAM expansion card, special graphics adapter or CD-ROM drive, that sort of thing)
 
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Looking at the back of the system, this seems to be far from a clone--the boards look to be sui generis. The implication is that the I/O mapping, chips used, etc. are very different from the out-of-the-box 5150. There's no guarantee at all of compatibility at the hardware or BIOS level of the 5150.

DOS (either PC- or MS-) consists of two pieces; the part that actually has the higher-level functionality (usually called IBMDOS.COM or MSDOS.SYS) and a lower-function OEM-configurable portion (usually called IBMBIO.COM or IO.SYS). It's this second piece that matters.

Another way to look at it is that you're not going to boot out-of-the-box PCDOS 1.1 on your DEC Rainbow.

I'll admit that I could be wrong and that this really is a true 5150-compatible clone. On the other hand, management at CPT may have considered PC compatibility to be counter-productive.
 
kishy said:
What would stop a "normal" MS-DOS or PC-DOS of the same age from running on it?

(wondering for my own knowledge's sake, not attempting to strike down your point...I just didn't know there was anything at all hardware-specific about the OEM versions of DOS besides perhaps drivers for non-essential extra hardware the machine shipped with like a particular RAM expansion card, special graphics adapter or CD-ROM drive, that sort of thing)
Click to expand...
There were quite a few systems that ran a version of MS-DOS but were not PC-compatible; most of the early Japanese machines for example (NEC, Toshiba, Sanyo, Sharp etc.), but also many US, Canadian or European boxes. As Chuck says, just looking at the connectors would suggest that this is not a "clone."
 
Chuck(G) said:
Looking at the back of the system, this seems to be far from a clone--the boards look to be sui generis. The implication is that the I/O mapping, chips used, etc. are very different from the out-of-the-box 5150. There's no guarantee at all of compatibility at the hardware or BIOS level of the 5150.

DOS (either PC- or MS-) consists of two pieces; the part that actually has the higher-level functionality (usually called IBMDOS.COM or MSDOS.SYS) and a lower-function OEM-configurable portion (usually called IBMBIO.COM or IO.SYS). It's this second piece that matters.

Another way to look at it is that you're not going to boot out-of-the-box PCDOS 1.1 on your DEC Rainbow.

I'll admit that I could be wrong and that this really is a true 5150-compatible clone. On the other hand, management at CPT may have considered PC compatibility to be counter-productive.
Click to expand...

MikeS said:
There were quite a few systems that ran a version of MS-DOS but were not PC-compatible; most of the early Japanese machines for example (NEC, Toshiba, Sanyo, Sharp etc.), but also many US, Canadian or European boxes. As Chuck says, just looking at the connectors would suggest that this is not a "clone."
Click to expand...

re:both

That would definitely make sense. If the hardware is different in significant enough ways (or at least interfaced in significantly different ways) then the software currently on that should be recovered and backed up several times.
 
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Here are more pics inside. I thought that this looks like it might be a bios chip ,one with white on it. It says C.Generator next line-19200042-01 next line-CHKSUM 6EDA. Not up on these old machines. I don't want to keep turning on this machine. or taking it apart if it has some value or information that might be of value historically that may be of some use.
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This probably is a PC clone, because it looks like it has a typical XT motherboard with DIP switches, ISA slots, and speaker. The keyboard certainly looks like an XT 83-key unit. On the other hand, the ports attached to the motherboard aren't something usually seen on XTs, but it was not unheard of.
 
"C. Generator" is almost certainly the character generator ROM for the display. You may want to blow the dust out with a little compressed air, or brush it off with a soft bristle brush.
 
gonekrazy said:
Here are more pics inside. I thought that this looks like it might be a bios chip ,one with white on it. It says C.Generator next line-19200042-01 next line-CHKSUM 6EDA. Not up on these old machines. I don't want to keep turning on this machine. or taking it apart if it has some value or information that might be of value historically that may be of some use.
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[/QUOTE]

Consider yourself rather lucky; that machine got an Acculogic sIDE-1/16 card. This card has the ability to use 16-bit IDE drives with an 8-bit bus, and that means that you can easily connect the hard drive to a modern computer in order to back it up faster.

Those cards are also rather, but not too rare. We did actually try to clone that board here on the forums some time ago, but we ended up with a sligthly different design. PM the user "Hargle" if you want a BIOS-Extension update for it; making it recognize drives larger than ~500MB.

BTW, it looks like your system needs a bit of a dust cleaning.
Click to expand...
 
per said:
Consider yourself rather lucky; that machine got an Acculogic sIDE-1/16 card. This card has the ability to use 16-bit IDE drives with an 8-bit bus, and that means that you can easily connect the hard drive to a modern computer in order to back it up faster.

Those cards are also rather, but not too rare. We did actually try to clone that board here on the forums some time ago, but we ended up with a sligthly different design. PM the user "Hargle" if you want a BIOS-Extension update for it; making it recognize drives larger than ~500MB.

BTW, it looks like your system needs a bit of a dust cleaning.
Click to expand...

I was about to note that. I imagine it's comparable to the Juko D16-X? I'm always on the lookout for cards like this so it's nice to know some model numbers I can cite when people ask me what I want.
 
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kishy said:
I imagine it's comparable to the Juko D16-X?
Click to expand...

It uses PIO for transfers, and it is rather close to our XT-IDE card project (the BIOS from the XT-IDE project will, in fact, work with the Acculogic card if the I/O port is set properly). By this, you'll get decent R/W speeds, but not really fast ones. We calculated it to be around 70-80KB/s for big-file transfers.

How that compares to the Juko D16-X, I don't know since I don't know it.

La crème de la crème of 16-bit IDE cards for 8-bit slots is the Silicon Valley ADP50L. It does amazingly 300KB/s in an 4.77MHz XT, and it can be pushed up to 1MB/s if you overclock it. It achieves this by using memory-mapped I/O. I really want one of those, but I don't want to pay $200 (they're usually overpriced, a LOT)...
 
new time/date entered. Microsoft(R) MS-DOS(R) Version 5.00
C>dir

volume in drive C is MS-DOS 5
volume serial number is 0021-0029
directory of C:\

DOS <dir> 01-01-80 12:01a
command com 47845 04-09-91 5:00a
config sys 89 01-01-80 12:02a
3 files 47934 butes
40224768 bytes free
 
Sounds like a clone to me, given that MS-DOS 5.0 was the first retail version of DOS and "OEM specials" had largely disappeared by then.

Sad, in a way--I like the "nearly PC compatibles" better rather than the very common clone stuff manufactured in the Far East.
 
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